Textile flexible structures are known to stop bullet fired by a gun; they are mainly composed of high tenacity fibers arranged in different styles as warp/weft fabric, unidirectional fabric, multiaxial fabric etc.
These types of protections, also known as body armor, are mainly used by Local Police Officers.
Textile flexible structures are not suitable to stop bullet fired from rifle; in this case the protection can only be given by hard plates.
It has been found that a defined combination of soft and rigid textile structures is suitable to stop also bullets fired by a rifle. Ceramic layer can be added to the combination if it is needed to protect from very aggressive Armor Piercing bullets.
These bullets can be used only during war or battle field.
It is known that a good protection has to combine two properties: the possibility of stopping the bullet and the capability of reducing as much as possible the back face deformation.
It is obvious that back face is a critical value when the bullet proof structure protects a person.
High values of the back face deformation can induce necrosis and even fatal injuries; more particularly, high values of back face deformation do not allow the wearer to promptly react to the attack due to the high shock absorbed by the human body.
Patent Application IT MI2009A001222 discloses a structure comprising at least one first and one second textile rigid elements, which are distinct and co-operate with each other to dissipate the energy associated with an incident bullet impact.
The structure above, while providing a good general protection, still needs some improvements in term of trauma reduction.